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WINDSOR TERRACE — September 27 marked one month since Hurricane Laura touched down in Louisiana and destroyed homes, flooded churches, businesses and even displaced priests. Houses of worship were left without a roof and people hoping to return to the pews will find them destroyed.
Bishop Glen Provost of the Diocese of Lake Charles, La. told The Tablet that he estimates that out of the 16 buildings which were either totaled or destroyed due to the hurricane, half of them were churches. The roof of the chancery collapsed during the storm, deeming the building unusable.
“We are very much in the initial stages of recovery,” Bishop Provost said. “There’s a lot that’s being done. Every day is a new adventure because we never know what difficulty or what problem we might have to address on any given day.”
The diocese, in a report posted on its website, said that only one of its six Catholic schools reopened Aug. 31, while others needed repairs or were severely damaged. Bishop Provost told his diocese that one of the school’s administration buildings was blown off, while windows were blown in.
In terms of communicating within the diocese, the bishop said they’re operating solely on mobile devices. He was able to speak to The Tablet Sept. 28, he said, because of a remote device that was loaned to him by the Archbishop of New Orleans.
“Communication is a very iffy proposition at the moment,” he said. “We have no landline, no phone lines. We’re only operating off cell phones. No internet.”
One thing that was untouched, however, was the support of the community, not only within Lake Charles, but also of the greater United States.
“A lot of people evacuated,” Bishop Provost said. “But there were many who stayed and many who returned to help out. I have found the community really pulling together and very much involved in recovery efforts.”
According to the diocese’s report, phone calls have been pouring into the bishop’s office from Europe, in addition to a multitude of bishops, friends and civic officials. The Knights of Columbus donated $150,000 to the Diocese of Lake Charles to assist with recovery efforts.
Catholic Charities of Southwest Louisiana, under the leadership of Sister Miriam Maclean, R.S.M., was on the ground running the same day of the hurricane as soon as it was deemed safe to do so.
“We are here, we are open and we are trying to meet the needs of the community,” Sister Miriam said. According to sister and the bishop, what the community needs right now are volunteers who can help rebuild after the devastation.
“We have on our website (lcdiocese.org),” Bishop Provost said, “ways of getting in touch with Catholic Charities or with the diocese.”
Editor’s Note: The Brooklyn Diocese is still accepting donations for the people suffering from Hurricane Laura and the West Coast Wildfires. Checks can be made out to The Compostela Fund and addressed to the following:
The USCCB Bishop’s Emergency Disaster Fund 310 Prospect Park West Brooklyn, NY 11215
By Currents News Staff and Jorge I. Dominguez-Lopez
LONG ISLAND — President Donald Trump officially announced today the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett, her husband Jesse M. Barrett, and the couple’s seven children were present at the event in the White House Rose Garden. The president described Barrett as “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds.”
“I stand before you today,” President Trump said at the beginning of his remarks, “to fulfill one of the highest and most important duties under the United States Constitution — the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice”.
Paying tribute to Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the president said that “over the past week our nation has mourned the loss of true American legend.”
Then he described the highlights of Barrett’s career as well as her personal life as a wife and mother. He pointed out that if she is confirmed, Barrett will be the first woman in the Supreme Court with school-age children.
President Trump expressed his desire for a civil and respectful confirmation process in the Senate.
First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, his wife Karen, Maureen Scalia, widow of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, senators, and other officials were in attendance.
After the president, Barrett also started her remarks by paying tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and to Justice Scalia.
“Particularly poignant to me,” Barrett said, “was her long and deep friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia, my own mentor. Justices Scalia and Ginsburg disagreed fiercely in print without rancor in person. Their ability to maintain a warm and rich friendship despite their differences even inspired an opera. These two great Americans demonstrated that arguments, even about matters of great consequence, need not destroy affection.”
While explaining her judicial philosophy, she said: “Justice Antonin Scalia’s judicial philosophy is mine too. A judge must apply the law as written,” she said.
Barret thanked her husband and her family. “The president has asked me to become the ninth justice,” she said, “and as it happens, I’m used to being in a group of nine.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett with her family and President Trump at the nomination ceremony. (Photo: Screen shot/CNN.com.)
Barrett, a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was a law clerk to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and is known to be a conservative, pro-life Catholic. She would take the seat of the liberal icon and vocal pro-choice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, changing the balance between the liberal and conservative wings of the Supreme Court.
If confirmed, Barrett will be the sixth Catholic on the court, joining justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Brett Kavanaugh.
Barrett received national attention in 2017 during confirmation hearings for her nomination to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed Barrett about her Catholic faith.
Senator Feinstein questioned Barrett about an article she had published arguing that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases due to their moral objections to capital punishment. “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern,” Senator Feinstein famously told her. Many Catholic and conservative commentators criticized the anti-Catholic bias of the comment.
The Senate approved Barrett’s nomination to the Seventh Circuit with a slim 55-43 vote. Barrett’s demeanor during the hearings enhanced her reputation.
Democrat legislators will have a difficult time stopping the Supreme Court confirmation process — Republicans have a majority in the Senate. But at the same time, Democrats feel the pressure from their base to do anything in their power to present this confirmation process just five weeks before the election as illegitimate.
The news of Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court will be particularly significant for the pro-life movement. One of the main goals of the movement for 40 years has been supporting pro-life presidential candidates that would name pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. The hope behind this strategy is to reverse the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that ruled abortion falls under the right to privacy and is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. A majority of pro-life judges on the Supreme Court could make overturning Roe vs. Wade possible.
Barrett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1972. She studied at St. Mary’s Dominican High School and majored in English literature at Rhodes College, where she graduated magna cum laude. She then studied law at Notre Dame, where she graduated first in her class in 1997.
After graduation, Barrett worked as a judicial law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1998 to 1999. As the late Justice Scalia, she considers herself an originalist. Originalists assert that all statements in the constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding of the authors or the people at the time it was ratified.
Barrett is married to Jesse M. Barrett, a fellow Notre Dame Law graduate and a partner at SouthBank Legal in South Bend, Indiana. They have seven children. Two of their children were born in Haiti and adopted by the couple. One of the couple’s biological children is a special needs child with Down Syndrome.
Barrett has been a professor at George Washington University Law School and Notre Dame Law School. Her former students and graduates of Notre Dame Law School recently issued a letter of support for her nomination saying that “Professor Barrett and her husband, Jesse, are raising seven children — a remarkable feat in itself. Professor Barrett’s dedication as a spouse and mother alongside her stellar teaching and scholarship represents the epitome of Notre Dame Law School’s challenge for its graduates to be ‘a different kind of lawyer.’”
She is respected even among people who disagree with her philosophy. In a mostly-critical profile today, New York Times columnist Adam Liptak said: “Judge Barrett’s judicial opinions […] are marked by care, clarity and a commitment to the interpretive methods used by Justice Antonin Scalia, the giant of conservative jurisprudence for whom she worked as a law clerk from 1998 to 1999.”
Barrett’s confirmation process will further polarize the charged 2020 electoral campaign. Republicans and Democrats hope that the confirmation process will mobilize their respective bases for the coming election. Both conservative and liberal interest groups have already prepared multi-million dollar campaigns to influence the Senate confirmation and its impact in the coming election.
“We need a job,” said Betzaida as she explained how a protest left her and her co-workers without jobs during a global pandemic.
Through a translator, she said, “We were fired together in March, and we haven’t been able to return to work since then.”
Betzaida and her former co-workers were fired from the Brooklyn-based company Art to Frames. They say it all started when their request for personal protective gear was denied.
“We protested because since the pandemic started in March, some factories were closing down. They were not giving us masks and that was what we asked for. But they didn’t give us anything, so we started protesting and got out of the factory,” explained Betzaida.
Betzaida claims they were fired after taking to the streets in protest.
The incident affected an estimated 20 workers. Losing their income right at the beginning of the global pandemic, made it almost impossible to pay their bills.
“I feel bad because some people really need the job and they fired us,” Betzaida explained. “And so far, they have not called us back to say if they need us. It all happened out of the blue, so suddenly.”
Like her, many have yet to find a new job.
They turned to Catholic Migration Services for help. The Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens affiliate provides free legal assistance.
“This is why we are around, to help the most vulnerable workers like these employees,” explained Magdalena Barbosa. She is the managing attorney for the Immigrant Workers’ Rights Program at Catholic Migration Services.
Due to the way current New York State labor laws are written, the workers were not protected. That meant Catholic Migration Services had to take the fight national.
They filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. In it, they claimed the company retaliated against the group after they banded together to improve working conditions — a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“To hear of workers being treated this way for requesting the very basic from their employer, masks, to protect themselves while they continue working just to be treated that way, and to be fired for that, just was just so terrible,” Magdalena explained.
Currents News has reached out to Art to Frames multiple times for comment, but has yet to receive a response.
Charges were just recently filed by Catholic Migration Services, and the former employees are already in touch with the National Labor Relations Board. They’re hoping that the charges will result in money that they lost out on after being fired, or even just getting their jobs back.
Parishioners with power washers and paint rollers worked all afternoon on Sept. 26 at Saint Peter’s Chaldean Cathedral in El Cajon, CA – covering and cleaning a confusing mix of graffiti.
Father Daniel Shaba shared video of swastikas, white power slogans, pentagrams, Black Lives Matter and Biden 2020 – all mixed together on the walls and ground.
‘It was very confusing when I saw the graffiti because it had things that didn’t have to do much with each other,” said Father Shaba.
Father Shaba says he arrived Saturday morning and saw the first swastika near the entrance, on a plaque at the convent. Then he saw the cathedral with nearly every wall covered.
“It’s very devastating. We’re a very small minority, Chaldean community. We fled persecution in Iraq and here we are facing it again, in a place where we thought we wouldn’t,” he said.
Word spread fast, and the response from the community came faster.
“I’m very proud of them, because we had an enormous amount of parishioners come and want to help out, see how they could help us in any way shape of form. But to also hold tight to Jesus,” Father Shabba told Currents News.
Father Shaba says the church has surveillance footage of the crime which they’ve shared with law enforcement.
They will seek justice. But they also have a message for the vandals.
“I would say to the people who did this, we will pray for you. We will pray for your conversion and repent,” said Father Shaba.
The threat of closing is once again looming over non-essential businesses.
In recent weeks eight neighborhoods have been identified as having clusters of new COVID-19 cases, prompting the city and Health Department to take action.
“Now we have a bigger problem on our hands and the situation particularly in Southern Brooklyn is causing great concern,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Mayor de Blasio took no questions during a bill signing Sept. 28 but last week he warned the city would ramp up safety enforcement if needed.
“If there are particular institutions, organizations, businesses that are not being responsive to the need to protect everyone, we’re going to be clear about the enforcement needed there,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The New York City Health Department said if new COVID-19 cases continue to rise in hotspots like Williamsburg, the city could ban gatherings of more than 10 people, hand out fines and close private schools and non-essential businesses.
“We don’t want to again have to close down businesses, we don’t want to have more restrictions, there are easier ways for us to go on with our lives,” said Dr. Mitch Katz the CEO, of NYC Health + Hospitals.
Most of the problematic areas account for more than 20 percent of the city’s new cases. Gravesend, Brooklyn alone accounts for seven percent. But it’s not only an increase in cases that has city officials on high alert – there’s also a rise in hospitalizations.
On September 15 there were 26 people in New York City hospitalized with COVID-19, on Sept 26 that number shot up to 278.
One of the hotspots is Williamsburg where Gabe Haim and his twin brother Danny own The Brooklyn Barber. During the months they were closed, they lost 70 percent of their business.
“We lost a lot of our clients, people are not getting haircuts anymore because they’re not going out, everything is shut down, we don’t need to look good,” Gabe said.
Already struggling to pay their nearly $30,000 monthly rent across three locations, losing the clients that came back would be devastating.
“We’re staying open a little later just to grab some more clients, and the clients are giving us a little bit more for tips just to survive,“ said Gabe.
According to the New York City Health Department, Monday, the only action the agency has taken is an increase in safety inspections.
A good Samaritan’s heroic actions were caught on camera when he sprang into action to save a trapped truck driver from a fiery wreck.
Smooth sailing traffic on Iowa’s Interstate 80 grinded to a halt. When the crash happened, trucker Bob Smith raced in to help as smoke filled the overturned truck’s cabin.
But Bob couldn’t kick in the window.
“I didn’t have an angle where I could get a good impact with it and realized very quickly that that wasn’t going to work,” Bob said.
He was able to use a tool from his truck to smash his way in and reach the driver.
“I yelled out, ‘Can you move?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Then you need to get out of the truck or you’re going to die,’” Bob said.
The driver – bloodied, but alive, was pulled to safety.
He was reportedly checked out at a hospital and was later released.
Tom Ferguson witnessed the near-death incident and got emotional talking about it.
“Bob was like a total superhero,” Tom said. “If Bob wasn’t there ….. I don’t know.”
More heroics were caught on camera, this time, in the Gulf of Mexico when Coast Guard rescuers rushed to save a group of boaters from an overturned vessel off Florida’s coast.
The boat reportedly capsized trapping the passengers, including a pregnant woman,in the water for nearly three hours.
Officals responded and executed a line rescue pulling them to safety one by one. One rescuer described the scene as very emotional, saying the first passenger they pulled in immediately gave them a giant hug.
A relic of St. Pope John Paul II has been stolen from a church in Spoleto, Italy.
Relics are considered sacred objects for Catholics and this one was a vial containing drops of blood from the late pope. It was placed inside a gold cross, which was on an altar in a side chapel in the cathedral.
The Archbishop of Spoleto called it a “grave act,” and in a video message, appealed to whomever took it to return it.
The theft was discovered on Sept. 23 as they were closing the church, according to the archdiocese. Italian police are investigating, including checking video footage from surveillance cameras inside the cathedral.
“I have the high honor to welcome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol of the United States,” said Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, “she does so on the catafalque built for Abraham Lincoln. May she rest in peace.”
The justice, wife, mother, and international icon becomes the first woman and first Jewish person to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.
“As a lawyer, she won equality for women and men not in one swift victory, but brick by brick, case by case, through meticulous careful lawyering,” said Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt.
Only 38 people – including Ginsburg – have received this honor since the practice began in 1852. Ginsburg died Sept.18 at the age of 87 after serving on the Supreme Court for 27 years.
Family, friends and dignitaries paid their final respects. Ginsburg’s personal trainer did three push ups in her honor.
President Donald Trump paid his respects on Sept. 24 by visiting the Supreme Court. He plans to announce his nominee to replace Ginsburg on Saturday, Sept. 26.
But while a new justice will eventually take her seat, no one can take Ginsburg’s place in history.
